The positive and negative effects of aviation on American society

Positives and Negatives from a Century of Aviation

Little did the Wright brothers know, on December 17, 1903, when they successfully tested their flying machine at Kitty Hawk, what an influential industry they were launching. They could not have known in their wildest dreams that ninety-nine years later, an airport called Chicago O'Hare would facilitate some 383,362 landing and takeoff cycles each year. Or that by 1967, sixty-four years later, aerospace would become America's leading industrial employer, with some 1,484,000 employees, and sales of $27 billion, according to author Donald Pattillo (Pushing the Envelope). Nor could the Wright brothers know that a man would fly to the moon, and walk on the moon, by 1969, just sixty-six years after that little plane at Kitty Hawk left solid ground for a few triumphant seconds.

But though the Wright brothers' crude little aircraft got the aerospace industry off the ground to become such a big part of the U.S. And global economy, the evolution and growth of aviation has not been an entirely positive series of events. This paper will examine the effects - good and bad - that aviation has had on the economy, on the society, on the environment and on military power.

The Growth and Effects of Aviation

Long before the Wright brothers, there were numerous examples of "flights" in the U.S., but engines did not power those flights. According to Roger E. Bilstein (Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts), ballooning was a major spectator event in the mid-nineteenth century. "Essentially entertainers, American balloonists provided thrilling free-balloon ascents for enthralled crowds," Bilstein writes. The balloon flights also "...generated reams of rococo copy for local newspapers, and lifted the country to a state of balloon mania on the eve of the Civil War." More important than amusement and entertainment, the use of balloon flight in warfare was now beginning. In fact, the very first use of flight in warfare occurred in 1849, when the Austrians set loose several unmanned hot-air balloons "...rigged with delayed-action bombs during an attack on Venice," according to Bilstein. The results of those bombs were "negligible, although portents for the future were ominous," he continued.

During the Civil War, the Union Army used hot-air balloons for reconnaissance, although it was a short-lived campaign. Thaddeus S.C. Lowe was a skilled balloonist who built seven balloons for the North, and devised a system of filling balloons in the field with hydrogen generators that he had devised. At first, some key Confederate troop movements were indeed spotted by soldiers perched in the wicker baskets hanging from the balloons. This reconnaissance had some effect on the war, but soon, Lowe and the Union Army were clashing over the needed horses, wagons and soldiers that were needed to continue the balloon project afloat, and it was abandoned.

Meanwhile, the initial step towards military fixed-wing aviation occurred on February 10, 1908. That was when the Wright brothers signed their first contract with the army. The $25,000 deal - a far cry from the $100,000 the Wright brothers were originally asking the army to pay - represented the original instance of an airplane "being designed and built for delivery to a customer at a profit," according to Pattillo. That first plane (Wright Model A) was delivered to the army on schedule, on August 20, 1908. It was most unfortunate that a defective propeller caused the first plane to crash, killing Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge and injuring Orville Wright. But the army believed in the Wright Model A, ordered another, and it was delivered in June, 1909. The Wright brothers thus became "The Wright Company" - and by the end of 1911, their factory was constructing two planes per month.

What was the initial effect of these first single engine planes? Pattillo: "Internationally licensed production, initiated by the Wrights, became widely practiced." In fact, by 1911, France was recognized as the leading aeronautical nation, although a few years later, foreign businesses were investing in airplane factories in the U.S. The Mitsui Company financed the Standard Aero Corporation in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1916, and Anthony Fokker (Netherlands) built a factory, also in New Jersey, in 1924. Jobs created by this new technology were badly needed at that time in U.S. history, and had a very positive effect on local economies.

Negative Sides of Modern Aviation

Surely the most negative aviation-related event that has happened - and has had a tremendously harmful and lingering effect on the U.S. economy and on citizen morale - was the hijacking of jetliners by terrorists on September 11, 2001. On that day, America learned that large airplanes can quite easily be turned into missiles, and those missiles upon impact become potent bombs, to be used by our enemies against this nation. This is an issue that leaders must address, in terms of making airports truly secure and safe. Meanwhile, another kind of airport safety is in the news lately. A recent article in Time Magazine alludes not to hijacking, or of people in planes, but rather to "...the vastly greater numbers on the ground who are brutalized as the planes pass overhead."

Millions of people who live "...under the proliferating webs of flight path...are paying an unacceptable price in stress, lost sleep, impaired hearing, inability to concentrate, in their children's ability to learn and in the generally degraded quality of life that results when the mind is tormented by these intrusions," writes Time journalist Lance Morrow.

And while that belligerent attack on airport noise lacks any specific data to back up the assertions, there are plenty of data to show the harmful effect that expanding airports are having on Americans. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), among the most respected - and best-funded - environmentally active advocacy groups, recently conducted an empirical study about airports. They sent lengthy questionnaires to 125 of the nation's busiest airports, and received cooperation from 46 of those airports. They felt the need to conduct this survey since aviation is the fastest growing mode of transportation in the U.S. - growing at almost twice the rate of automobile travel - and that continuous exposure to high levels of aircraft noise affects millions of people. Many of those millions suffer from hypertension, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal problems, resulting from the constant high levels of noise from airports.

The NRDC found that, in addition to excessive noise levels, airplanes at U.S. airports "...produced 350 million pounds of pollutants (ozone precursors, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides) in 1993, twice that produced by planes in 1970." And the problem with airplane-generated pollution is that airports are not regulated in the same way that other air pollution sources are regulated. "State and local regulators remain nearly powerless to address the problem in meaningful ways," the study asserts. Also, the study found that chemicals used in de-icing planes in cold weather runs off the tarmac and into local waterways. "Forty-five of the 50 busiest airports in the country were within three miles of an ocean, bay, lake, wetland, reservoir, river, or stream."

In conclusion, the NRDC survey also zeroed in on climate change. The report shows that "...aircraft are responsible for between 2-to-3% of total carbon dioxide emissions globally." That may not sound like much, but when all the negative effects from the nation's growing aviation industry are added up, including safety concerns (re: terrorism), it presents serious concerns for the future. American jets do "Slip the surly bonds of earth," but they also leave behind some troubling issues for future generations.